This is a follow on from the previous post in case you havn't already seen that.

Made some more changes to the planetary rings by removing the 3D effect which made them look like they went behind the planet. They now look flat and circular, which I think fits much better with the graphical style of the game.

This also means I can put small ice asteroids within the ring, which could possibly be used as a resource for something in the game.

(Click image for fullsize)

I am going to create new graphics for the ice asteroids/chunks which will be a bit smaller than in the screenshots and look more like sharp ice. At the moment they are using the same graphics as the ore asteroids.

And/or blocking the way of ships with larger size. Or maybe even make asteroid fields with different density: the denser the field is, the smaller ships it will block.

Similar gameplay was implemented in Star Wars: Empire at War. There only starfighter could pass through an asteroid field (not sure about freighters or other small ships), while the bigger ones, especially Star Destroyers could not. Unfortunately the field had just one, preset density.

In real, 3D life - yes, I agree. But this is a 2D game and if you look at the pictures, you'll see that the asteroids surround the planet completely.

Also, using asteroid fields to limit the approaching points is used in other games such as "Star Wars: Empire at War" (there are probably other such games but I haven't played many Space Sims and RTSes).

If you look at the right side of the banner (the picture at the top) for example, you see that the ships go below the asteroids. Even if we see everything in 2D, we know it is 3D, this is why I said it would be unrealistic.

Actually on most pictures you see that asteroids go one above another.

To make an analogy: Lets say we have a big wall on the surface of the world and there's a tunnel. From above (2D view), we would say that people can't go through the wall, but they do go through...

If you're going to argue about realism, asteroids in the asteroid belt are millions of kilometers distant from each other. They rarely collide. They spin very slowly, otherwise they would break apart. The debris in Saturn's rings is much closer together and is a significant hazard to modern spacecraft.